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  • 1.  Supplying excess PV production from a private property facility

    Posted 04-29-2021 04:04 PM
    I have a small PV system on my house.  My electric utility is a cooperative that does month to month net metering and also pays about 3 cents/KWhr for excess power supplied beyond what the house uses.  My property also has some unused land that might be suitable for a "solar farm".  Does anyone have any ideas on how I would check the feasibility of building such a facility and supplying power to the utility well in excess of what I use and getting paid for it?


  • 2.  RE: Supplying excess PV production from a private property facility

    Posted 04-29-2021 05:06 PM
    Greg,

    The key information for you to find out is what type of incentives the local utility, or the local city, or the local municipality, or the local State government or the current Federal government will give you towards the investment in your solar farm. If they tell you that they will refund 30% of your investment or more or less, etc ... that will be some good news for you.  Now with Biden's government;   green energy opportunities are starting to look very bright in the horizon. So you start looking into the details. 

    In parallel, there will be a need to figure out how much energy your land will be able to produce and how much the equipment will cost. Equipment will include, not only Solar PV panels, Racks with trackers, cables, Inverters, Transformers to connect to the grid, etc. It will be important for you to know, what type of agreement you will enter with the your local electric utility (BOT or Build Operate and Transfer), how much they will pay you for the KWh that you will generate for the next 30 years, etc. All of these will be necessary for the ROI analysis.

    Best

    Ivan

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    Ivan Flor
    IvanMFlor@hotmail.com
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Supplying excess PV production from a private property facility

    Posted 04-30-2021 09:49 AM

    Greg,

    I too am in a co-op and gone are the prior production incentives and buy back at retail rates. They pay me "avoided cost" rate which is the 2-3 cent wholesale rate. 

    Since installing my solar system, I am negative zero overall and the co-op calculated the bill monthly. I was able to get them to agree to an "annual true up" where I pay the monthly connection costs but I only pay for the electricity itself once a year which will usually mean a check for me at the wholesale rate and it avoids me paying retail rates during cloudy months. 

    Unless your utility or state pay incentives to encourage renewable production, it will be unlikely to achieve a positive ROI with excess production. 

    Don in Wisconsin



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    Donald Hoffman
    jackidon2000@gmail.com
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Supplying excess PV production from a private property facility

    Posted 04-30-2021 09:59 AM
    Thanks Ivan.

    Another possibility I had thought about is leasing the land for some established company to build a facility on.  The City of Pendleton seems to have a deal like that  with a company called Cypress Creek and I was surprised by what they get.   THe lease is $1000/acre per year increasing 2.5% per year on 58 acres.  My space is only 5-10 acres (depending on how much I want to alot) but I'd gladly take 5-10K/year.  I think the problem I might have is that there is not a substation nearby and the power line that serves my area probably has low capacity.

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    Gregory Sinton
    gsinton@msn.com
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Supplying excess PV production from a private property facility

    Silver
    Contributor
    Posted 05-01-2021 05:06 PM
    I think the fear of demand destruction is now beginning to outweigh the financial burden for them, to invest in more infrastructure to handle increases in load for existing and new customers. In short at this point, they would rather invest for themselves rather than have distributed production handle the new load, putting off grid investment. At this rate, their current profit model is dying a slow painful death, with no easy solutions that will fly in the long run.

    So the new theme is, we don't care if you are helping to handling the loads for us. WE actually want you gone, so wholesale is all you get. Of course size matters, and there is no ROI of any significance when you are so little. You cannot compete with gigawatt producers. The math is just not there.

    The traditional solution is of course aggregation.

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    william fitch
    Owner
    www.WeAreSolar.com
    fcfcfc@ptd.net
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    Original Message